In order to continually improve physical standards of living for greater numbers of people, it is necessary to achieve more results with fewer resources. From the industrial revolution through the present, economies of scale have resulted in very large components and systems of capital equipment and central operating facilities. Central facilities have the further disadvantage of requiring distribution systems which have their own capital costs and efficiency losses. Nevertheless, historically, central systems have exhibited cost advantages that supported their use. Smaller distributed components and systems are made having higher unit costs and used in applications where the substantial capital cost of a larger, more efficient component or system is not justified. Thus, there is a need for components and systems that can be made of a size appropriate for the desired capacity and can avoid the need for a distribution system yet achieve the efficiency of the larger scale components and systems.
Components exhibiting high efficiency at small scale include microchannel heat exchangers used to remove heat from electronic components.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,115,858, May 26, 1992, MICRO-CHANNEL WAFER COOLING CHUCK, Fitch et al. discusses a 3M microchannel stock used to cool a wafer by passing a liquid coolant through alternate channels. A high heat transfer fluid is passed through the remaining channels to remove the heat.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,998,580, Mar. 12, 1991, CONDENSER WITH SMALL HYDRAULIC DIAMETER FLOW PATH, Guntly et al. shows a condenser for use in air conditioning or refrigeration systems. Construction of the condenser is corrugated metal and flat strips.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,707, May 21, 1991, MULTI-PASS CROSSFLOW JET IMPINGEMENT HEAT EXCHANGER, Nguen describes a crossflow heat exchanger and a construction thereof by stacking multiple core and spacer plates.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,296,775, Mar. 22, 1994, COOLING MICROFAN ARRANGEMENTS AND PROCESS, Cronin et al. discusses a micro electronic cooling fan in combination with ridges or fins, e.g., open channels.
The art as shown in the above referenced patents teaches design of specific heat exchange equipment requiring substantial fabrication for individual pieces of heat exchange equipment. Use of this equipment for medium to large scale operations would require the fabrication of multiple heat exchangers wherein the cost increases linearly with the number of heat exchangers.
Moreover, fabrication of a system is considered complicated and expensive on a microscale. Although it is presently possible to make microscale motors, for example, conventional wisdom combines microscale components in series with the result that achieving a macroscale result would require enormous effort and cost of making millions of tiny systems.
Thus, there is a need for a heat exchanger, as well as other system components, and a fabrication technique that permits fabrication of a necessary number of heat exchangers and other components for an application wherein the unit cost per component is sufficiently low that extension to multiple components is achieved with much less cost, and wherein combination of components to form systems for macroscale results is also achieved with low cost.